Text | Music First Voice, author | Pengpeng, editor | Fan Zhihui "Using my AI vocals is really ugly! Shameless!" In the comment area of ​​"It has nothing to do with me", singer Su Xingjie angrily yelled. But in the 999+ comment area, few people paid attention to Su Xingjie's voic

Text | Music First Sound, author | Pengpeng, editor | Fan Zhihui

"It's so ugly to use my AI voice! Shameless!"

In the comment area of ​​"It Has Nothing to Do with Me", singer Su Xingjie angrily said. But in the 999+ comment area, few people paid attention to Su Xingjie's voice, and many netizens were asking for the original version.

Entering the details page of this female singer named Lu Ray, you will feel as if you have entered the "parallel time and space" of hit songs. In addition to "It Has Nothing to Do with Me", she has also sung "pseudo-original" songs with the same name as "Slow Voice", "Under the Sea" and other popular songs. The melody and lyrics are infinitely close to the original song, and the vocals and single cover have strong AI. feel.

Obviously, Lu Ray is a music tailor who washes songs at the pixel level, and is also an epitome of the rapid iteration of song washing technology.

Music tailors like her are stepping on AI sewing machines, eroding the foundation of the music industry with exponential growth in productivity.

"It has nothing to do with me", related to ai

"What started as a heart-to-heart conversation has turned into a dull one. I can't wait for your good night."

This song "It has nothing to do with me" was released in 2020 and was composed by independent musician Ah Rong The song is sung by Zhang Zhirui, Xi Yu, and Haus Music, and the music is composed by Xi Yu and Haus Music. With its soulful melody and nuanced portrayal of love, it quickly gained recognition within a niche audience.

Until August this year, this song was rediscovered and set off a craze for covers across the Internet. Among them, the cover of Doctor @Tu Ge is Busy in the Corridor on Douyin has received over 10 million likes, and related topics have been viewed more than 2 billion times.

However, about half a month after the original version of "It Has Nothing to Do with Me" became popular, the song-washing version was quietly launched online. The singer was the aforementioned Lu Yu, and the songwriter was Hua Huan. The title of this version of

is exactly the same as the original version. In terms of melody, the washed version retains the chorus part of the original version almost intact, and puts these fragments in front to attract the audience's attention. Although has rewritten the verse part, the melody structure and paragraph arrangement still follow the original version. There are also obvious traces of cleaning in the lyrics of

, and only some words and phrases have been simply replaced or fine-tuned. For example, in the chorus, "heart-to-heart conversation" is changed to "long talk", and "looking forward to it" is changed to "looking forward to it day and night"; in the main song, the original "Christmas not celebrated" is changed to "uncooked" Cooked eggs", which made people laugh and cry. For the vocal part of

, although the song version was changed to male and female duet, it was confirmed by Su Xingjie that it was her own AI vocal clone. It is not difficult to see that the single cover was obviously designed and created by AI.

What’s more important is that this clumsy laundering method has found a simple and direct path to monetization.

's song-washed version of "It Has Nothing to Do with Me" makes full use of the traffic dividends of the short video platform. By quickly following popular hot spots, the popular songs are rewritten with AI tools and presented to the audience. As of August 28, on QQ Music, the collection of the song has exceeded 1 million+, with 9,633 comments, and more than 10,000 people are listening to it in real time; on Kugou Music, there are 5,243 comments, with 20,000 people listening. The rest of the people were listening in real time. After completing the accumulation of exposure and fan base, the team behind the scenes has now set the song as a VIP and achieved monetization through revenue sharing.

What does not match the popularity is that Lu Lei only has an anime avatar on the singer's details page, and the introduction is only "Chinese-speaking mainland female singer". In order to prove why Lu Ray is so popular, Music First searched the information of 41 publicly released works by Lu Ray, and finally discovered the team behind this AI music tailor - Beijing Cloud Cat Culture Co., Ltd.

Tianyancha shows that the company’s legal person, second largest shareholder and executive director are all Song Mengjun. For those in the industry who follow Xige, this is a very familiar name. This person has a long history of plagiarism, a large number, and a rich variety, which is unmatched in the industry.

From Jay Chou to Internet singers, they are all within the scope of Song Mengjun's singing.As early as 2018, he caused public outrage due to his unlimited song-washing behavior, and the works he released can be regarded as an illustration of the hot songs of the past few years. "9420" became popular, so Song Mengjun wrote "9421"; Li Ronghao's "Li Bai" became popular, so he also wrote a song "Li Bai"; Da Zhangwei's "Why Am I So Good-looking", he wanted to write a song "So So" What to do if it looks good”.

However, through this song "It has nothing to do with me", it is not difficult to find that Yunmao Culture's song-washing gameplay has quickly completed iterations with the blessing of AI tools.

The evolution of song washing, music tailoring is ruining the future of the industry

In today's music industry, the phenomenon of "song washing" is no longer a new topic.

The Beijing Cloud Cat Culture Co., Ltd. mentioned above was established in 2017. This company alone has been "deeply engaged" in Xige for nearly 7 years. However, the new wave of song-washing represented by popular tracks such as "It Has Nothing to Do with Me" has shown a series of new playing methods and new characteristics.

First of all, creative techniques assisted by AI technology are increasingly mature. The introduction of the AI tool has greatly accelerated the speed and efficiency of song washing. The song washing team can provide the songs they want to plagiarize to AI for reference, and AI will take care of the entire process from song creation to album cover.

Secondly, with the rapid spread of short videos, the efficiency of song promotion is greatly improved. Today, short video platforms have become the primary channel for the public to discover music. After hearing a good song clip, they will turn to search for the full song on the music platform. This behavior pattern has been accurately captured and exploited by the Xige team. By "riding" the popularity of popular songs, they can quickly increase the exposure and popularity of their own works, and achieve a surge in the number of listeners within an extreme period of time.

Finally, the ambiguity of the legal definition provides a gray area for song laundering behavior. is different from the speed and low cost of washing songs. The rights protection of original works often goes through ups and downs. At present, my country's current laws do not have a systematic judgment standard for plagiarism of musical works. It is often necessary for both parties to compare music scores, apply for expert assistance for identification, and even perform live performances in court for comparison. The process is complicated and cumbersome, and it can often take several years to obtain compensation.

However, even if the infringement is punished, the original author will receive very little compensation. Previously, the song "Dislocated Time and Space" was also censored. It took two years and was finally settled in the Intermediate People's Court of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. However, the final fine was only 50,000 yuan, which may be difficult to cover the cost of rights protection.

In comparison, the Xige team’s monthly income of 100,000 is already common, and the cost of infringement is negligible. Song Mengjun once said that on Kugou Music alone, his personal song playback volume reached 920 million in 2018, and all his works were downloaded 8.08 million times. "My total personal works in 2018 created 16 million "The value of the RMB."

In addition, with the emergence of new technologies such as AI vocal training, the law is facing unprecedented challenges in defining what is "original" and what is "reasonable borrowing." The lagging nature of the legal framework allows many song-washing behaviors to escape legal supervision.

technical means are becoming increasingly mature, social media continues to promote it, and there are regulatory blind spots in the law. The current song laundering behavior has "evolved" with new characteristics.

However, this undoubtedly has a huge impact on real creators.

On the one hand, song-washing has severely dampened the creator’s creative motivation and original spirit. In the case of "It has nothing to do with me", Su Xingjie stood up and expressed her anger, but Beijing Cloud Cat Culture did not respond directly. In fact, many musicians and music critics have expressed doubts and anger during the 7-year journey of Beijing Cloud Cat Culture, but they will always come back with different styles and continue to make a lot of money. . In the long run, this kind of negative sentiment will hardly harm the creativity and vitality of the entire music industry.

On the other hand, the dilemma of copyright protection and rights protection problems also make creators feel more pressure. creators often face problems such as difficulty in proving evidence, long cycle, and low compensation during the process of defending their rights, which further exacerbates their sense of helplessness.

What can be expected is that if more and more musicians or teams choose to take shortcuts and quickly gain market attention through copy-and-paste plagiarism, and leverage AI technology to gain strong scale expansion capabilities, they can quickly occupy the market. share, continues to squeeze the living space of original music, and both musicians and music fans will undoubtedly have to endure the sluggish innovation ability and the deterioration of the market environment.

With the proliferation of song-washing behavior, the trend of homogenization and simplification of musical works will also intensify, thereby weakening the diversity and richness of culture. It destroys the ecological balance of the music industry and makes it difficult for truly talented and creative musicians to receive the rewards and recognition they deserve.

If things go on like this, the music industry will fall into a vicious cycle of bad money driving out good money, and music tailors will become the big winners in the market.

Faced with Xi Ge, what else can we do?

Why is song-washing so rampant?

The answer is simple, because the behavior of song laundering exists in a gray triangle area intertwined with the three dimensions of "technology-law-value".

Technically, the rapid development of AI technology has greatly improved the efficiency of music content production, but there is a lack of effective governance means to define the boundaries of AI creation; legally, plagiarism plus AI restrictions, the existing legal system It is even more stretched; in terms of value, the public’s understanding of the value of originality also needs to be deepened.

In this way, ai Xige seems to be making music, but in fact it is doing "grayscale management". To truly kill the shameless song-washing behavior, multiple parties need to work together and be prepared for a protracted war.

For music practitioners, they should be the first to start self-protection and protect their creative achievements by strengthening copyright registration and using watermark technology. When encountering infringement, you should have the courage to use legal weapons to protect your own rights and interests, and jointly create a good environment that respects originality and encourages innovation.

The public’s originality awareness should also be further cultivated. By strengthening music copyright education and publicity, we will increase public awareness of the value of originality, encourage everyone to respect originality, resist plagiarism, and form good music consumption habits. At the same time, a public participation supervision and feedback mechanism will be established so that everyone can become a guardian of the health of the music ecosystem.

As far as the entire music market environment is concerned, 's anti-song laundering relies more on active actions at the industry and policy levels, especially the improvement and optimization of policies and regulations, which is definitely the most direct way to put an end to song laundering.

The government and industry associations should speed up the updating and improvement of laws and regulations, establish the clear status of AI creation in the law and the copyright ownership of its works, so as to provide more solid legal support for original music. In addition, there is an urgent need to establish and strengthen an industry self-discipline and supervision system to intensify efforts to crack down on infringements such as AI song laundering and ensure fair competition and healthy development of the music market.

Only through the combination of these measures can we fundamentally put an end to the phenomenon of song laundering and protect the legitimate rights and interests of music creators.

When the cost of cleaning songs is infinitely close to zero, when creating a work has to overcome hundreds of thousands of new songs before it can reach the audience, the huge difference in input-output ratio between the two, music tailoring has a huge impact on the entire music industry. It has caused negative impacts that cannot be ignored.

Only when users, industry, and policies work together to protect the originality of music, can the sun truly shine into the gray area.